Only 20 percent of drugs seized at CIS border

The law enforcement agencies of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) succeed in arresting only 15 to 20 percent of drugs smuggled into the country, according to Yury Yarov, CIS Executive Secretary and Chairman of the CIS Executive Committee, who spoke to RIA Novosti.

Heroin and opium from Afghanistan account for the bulk of the CIS drugs market, he went on to say. "A record-breaking harvest of raw opium is expected in that country in 2003," Yarov said. According to expert estimates, the anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan has not changed the drugs situation much.

In this connection, Yarov deems it necessary to stop the channels of drugs-trafficking across the CIS' southern borders from Afghanistan.

"We would need specific assistance of the UN, and primarily of the European nations to which the "drugs routes" lead from Asia," the CIS Executive secretary is convinced.

He reported that the CIS members countries' law enforcement agencies did conduct bilateral and multilateral special preventive operations aimed at curbing the activities of illegal trans-national groups engaged in arms- and drugs-trafficking and illegal migration.